Introducing The Panerai PAM 510 Luminor Marina 8 Days With Caliber P.5000: A New In-House Guy For Under $8000

Panerai and “in-house” don’t always go hand in hand. While on a consumer level, the in-house jobs are absolutely the more interesting watches from a watch guy’s perspective, it is the PAM’s using OTHER movements that get collectors going. Starting with the Rolex-made watches of the 30s and 40s, to the Angelus powered divers of the 50s, and 60s, all the way up to the killer redux Pam 21 using a vintage Rolex movement (which will likely run you over 200k today) to the Pam 203 using a vintage Angelus movement (which will cost you around 100k these days), and just a few years back, the PAM Radiomir 1940 using a Minerva movement. But, these are special watches - quite rare and often even more expensive. So, while many modern classics of Panerai use Unitas-based movements, we, and I think the world at large, looks to PAM for collection of fully in-house movements. They've already shown us a few, and now we have another one, complete with an 8-day power reserve and at a great price.

Panerai and “in-house” don’t always go hand in hand. While on a consumer level, the in-house jobs are absolutely the more interesting watches from a watch guy’s perspective, it is the PAM’s using OTHER movements that get collectors going. Starting with the Rolex-made watches of the 30s and 40s, to the Angelus powered divers of the 50s, and 60s, all the way up to the killer redux Pam 21 using a vintage Rolex movement (which will likely run you over 200k today) to the Pam 203 using a vintage Angelus movement (which will cost you around 100k these days), and just a few years back, the PAM Radiomir 1940 using a Minerva movement. But, these are special watches - quite rare and often even more expensive. So, while the modern classics of Panerai use Unitas-based movements, we, and I think the world at large, looks to PAM for collection of fully in-house movements. They've already shown us a few, and now we have another one, and at a great price.

The PAM 510 is a 44mm Luminor Marina housing the brand new Caliber P.5000. This new manually wound movement is made completely in-house and has a power reserve of an incredible eight days, or 192 hours. This trait is an homage to the Angelus-made 8-day watches of yesteryear. Even its size is reminiscent of the old movements, in a full 15.75 lignes (35.7mm) - the Angelus was a 16 ligne movement. The P.5000 has an architecture similar to the old style movements, with most details hidden from the eye. All you can see on the P.5000 through the caseback of the PAm 510, besides the brush finished and diamond-polished plates are the balance cock and intermediate wheel, and variable inertia balance wheel The P.5000 does feature two barrels, with 127 components and a frequency of 3 Hz. This movement varies significantly from the other in-house manually wound caliber in this price range. the P999 found in this 42mm Radiomir (PAM 337).

This new PAM 510 (PAM 511 in rose gold) is pure, unabashed Panerai, with traditional Luminor case complete with locking crown and an impressive 8-day movement. The movement itself looks very much the part with a robust, no non-sense aesthetic. The best part? This new in-house guy in steel is only $7,300! This is a watch that, in our opinion, will sell really, really well. More details here.